Delta Provides Real-Time Monitoring System Solution for SMT Industry

Thanks to rapid economic development, the electronics manufacturing industry has been experiencing substantial growth in recent years. With these developments manufacturers face new challenges such as intense competition, lower profits, higher labor costs and increasing industry demands for higher quality production and products. To overcome these challenges, manufacturers are forced to continuously improve their level of automation for smart manufacturing and digitalization in order to save labor costs and retain their competitiveness.

In today's electronics industry, surface mount technology (SMT) refers to the process of soldering electronic components to the surface of circuit boards. It is a commonly used and widespread process. With recent developments in smart manufacturing, detailed visualization of process information has become increasingly important. To ensure the quality of each printed circuit board (PCB), manufacturers must be able to monitor the temperature of every reflow oven through a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) during the production process.

For effective and easy monitoring Delta provides its SMT reflow oven real-time monitoring system solution. The SMT industry can apply this solution to manage PCB barcode information, monitor real-time oven temperature profile, and record anomalies during production.

The monitoring system consists of two main parts:

• PCB barcode reading: First, based on feedback from the PCB S1/S2 layer, the Compact Modular Mid-range PLC AS Series activates the upper and lower barcode scanner for active reading of the PCB's barcode. Secondly, the Inductive Proximity Sensor IS Series calculates the speed of the copper mesh by counting the number of gear teeth. Finally, the system provides a misreading prevention mechanism based on the correlating logic between the scanning count and the photoelectric count.

• PCB temperature profile monitoring: The PLC can read the temperature of the thermocouple in the reflow oven in real-time. The Data collector then transmits the collected data to the software, where the data is monitored. By finally creating a temperature profile for comparison with standard profiles of the same product type, effective quality control and improvement are guaranteed.

The solution also brings the following advantages in actual applications:

• Reduced labor cost: By implementing the system customers are able to save up to two workers for temperature measurement from their SMT team. In addition, Delta's system reduces costs significantly compared to competing products.

• Traceability and Replicability: By recording the oven temperature data for every individual PCB the customer can easily trace and monitor single products instead of being limited to batches. The solution can be horizontally deployed and replicated to wave soldering machine applications for fast introduction and quality improvement.

• Easy Integration: The oven temperature monitoring system easily connects with the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) via a network for efficient data exchange among all platforms and optimized reflow soldering.

Delta's SMT Reflow Oven Real-Time Monitoring System Solution provides customers with an optimal way to collect and manage reflow data for the easy, efficient data exchange of smart manufacturing.